A Deep Discovery

Armor Among Finds That Offer A Look Into Time Past

October 11, 2002|By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON Daily Press

JAMESTOWN ISLAND — Cameras flashed and tourists oohed out loud Thursday as a determined team of archaeologists -- working in a pit more than 10 feet deep -- removed a cache of early-17th-century armor from one of historic Jamestown's earliest wells.

The fragile artifacts appeared after weeks of digging at the site, which was discovered in June during an attempt to locate the town's west palisade wall. And as each new piece emerged from the bottom of the narrow, brick-lined shaft -- and then was followed by yet another rust-encrusted example -- the sight provided dramatic proof of the military edge that marked the first permanent English settlement in the New World.

"Most archaeologists will go their whole lives and not find a single piece of armor," staff archaeologist Eric Deetz said Thursday, surveying the delicate work in the steep, shored-up hole.

"But just today we have what seems to be a lot of body armor -- maybe breast plates, maybe back plates and maybe even a cabasset helmet. It's pretty exciting stuff."

Led by archaeologist Bill Kelso, the Jamestown Rediscovery scientists recovered the first piece of armor from the well about two weeks ago, when the excavation was only three feet below the surface of the ground.

Though one other mid-17th-century well had previously been found inside the bounds of the fort, the first artifacts unearthed here are believed to date to no later than 1618, suggesting that the shaft could reach back to the colony's earliest and least understood era.

"Discovering an early well is almost as exciting as finding the fort itself," said Kelso, who unearthed the remains of Jamestown's long-lost palisade walls more than six years ago.

"If it's as old as it appears -- and we don't find anything dating later than the fort at the bottom -- than it could really help fill some gaps in our knowledge of that early period."

Previous excavations conducted outside the fort during the 1930s and '50s uncovered more than two dozen later wells, many of them teeming with artifacts from the post-fort era.

That's because the abandoned shafts provided both a convenient place for the colonists of the mid-17th century to dispose of their garbage and a wet, unusually protective environment in which those artifacts would be preserved.

Similar results have come from the most recent well, with the number and variety of artifacts increasing as the archaeologists near the water table about 10 feet below the surface. In recent days, they've turned up several animal bones -- including remains from deer, pigs and cows -- that provide new insights into the settlers' diets.

With at least two feet of water-logged soil still to be explored, however, such finds could be only the beginning. Yet to be seen is any sign of the wooden barrels typically used to shore up the bottom of early Colonial wells.

"There is a whole class of artifacts that don't survive anywhere else because of the water," Deetz said.

"Most organic materials, including food remains as well as artifacts made of wood, leather or fabric, just rot away in dry soil. And as we worked above the water table here, all that stuff was gone."

Important microscopic evidence could be preserved at the bottom of the well, too, helping to answer questions about the plant life of the time as well as the colonists' diet.

Using an instrument known as a float tank, the archaeologists are examining the water and sediment for the presence of organic particles as small yet potentially revealing as insect parts, vegetable seeds and tree pollen.

Such information could help Kelso and his colleagues re-create the environment of early Jamestown with a breadth and detail that would have been impossible before.

"We've been hoping to find a well like this for a long time," he said.

"Getting the armor was just kind of a bonus.

Mark St. John Erickson can be reached at 247-4783 or online at merickson@dailypress.com